Best Practices for Numerical Weather Prediction Studies

The late Tom Warner of the National Center for Atmospheric Research just published an article entitled “Quality Assurance in Atmospheric Modeling”. You may not get it from the title, but this is a powerful paper that lays out 14 steps for improving modeling practices. All students and users of models need to read this paper … read more

Plain English Campaign gets it wrong

In almost all cases, I support the Plain English Campaign, who aim to improve the readability of government documents, corporate letters, web sites, and other forms of communication. In their 2011 Golden Bull Awards, however, the Plain English Campaign got it dead wrong. The UK Met Office won an award for ‘empowering people to make … read more

Errors in Publications #1

Check those page proofs carefully!

Will asking a question get your science paper cited more?

My friend Jim Steenburgh over at Wasatch Weather Weenies alerted me to this column in the Guardian newspaper. The column points out something that we scientists may know but forget from time to time: factors other than the quality of the science determine whether and how often our articles get cited by others. Among the … read more

How To Choose a Good Scientific Problem

I have not found a more concise and clear statement about how to choose a good scientific problem for someone at various stages in their career. Enjoy! Alon, U., 2009: How to choose a good scientific problem. Molecular Cell, 35, 726-728. DOI: 10.1016/j.molcel.2009.09.013. [PDF]

Writing a Thesis: How to Interact with your Supervisor

Three-Month Thesis has a thoughtful post about how many thesis drafts you need. I would disagree with a few things on that page. 1. The number of drafts depends very strongly on the student. I would argue that you need as many drafts as it takes to finish the thesis. 2. In principle, the quality … read more

Please don’t write multiple-part papers!

I’ve talked about this topic of writing multiple-part papers before. Earlier this year, I published an article about what the data show from Monthly Weather Review. Schultz, D. M., 2011: Rejection rates for multiple-part manuscripts. Scientometrics, 86, 251-259. [PDF] I found that although the rejection rates for multiple-part manuscripts were not that different from the … read more

How To Improve Your Writing

Three things will speed your improvement. Reread How-To guides and other inspirational books and articles. Here are some links and some recommendations ([1] and [2]) to get you started. For me, I derive inspiration from Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, which I reread every 3-5 years. Rereading parts of Eloquent Science can also … read more

How important is it to use “important” in your writing?

Have you read an article where the author talks about “an important process” or “the important role of another process”? Do these sort of platitudes go in one of your ears and out the other? Are you convinced by the author’s use of the word “important” that it truly is an important process? Or, do … read more

Problems with the term “overrunning”

Several authors have criticized the use of the term overrunning to represent warm-frontal lifting here and here. I don’t need to add anything to those Web pages, but I do want to point out that the definition provided in the American Meteorological Society’s Glossary of Meteorology is wrong and ambiguous. overrunning—A condition existing when an … read more

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